This invention relates generally to reflectors of radiant energy (e.g. electromagnetic radiation) both for collecting and emitting, and more specifically to concentrated solar power. The reflector of the invention is particularly adaptable to the collection of solar energy for use in heating systems, thermal to electrical conversion systems and in photovoltaic conversions systems. The reflector is also particularly well suited to relatively low cost, labor saving methods for erecting and maintaining such solar energy systems.
Over the years a variety of systems have been devised for the collection and utilization of solar energy. While many of these systems are quite efficient in accomplishing the objective, i.e. collecting and storing solar energy to supplement or replace more expensive systems utilizing common sources of energy, one primary problem remains, the initial cost of making and installing an efficient solar energy collecting system. If a solar energy collecting system is very expensive to make and install, such high capital expenditure is undesirable, since the potential user must wait too long to amortize this cost before realizing any savings in energy expense.
It is well known that solar energy may be converted into other useful forms of energy by using proper techniques. For example, solar energy may be converted into electrical energy by a so-called solar cell. The most common solar cells are made of silicon, but cells made of other materials, e.g., cadmium sulfide and gallium arsenide, have also been developed and tested. The required voltage and/or amperage may be generated using an appropriate series-parallel matrix in an integrated array.
At the current state of the art, a principal obstacle to wide scale adoption of solar cell energy collector installations is that manufacturing and installation costs of solar cell arrays generally are substantially higher than the cost of conventional electrical energy generating installations. Another factor limiting wide spread adoption of solar panel cells is radiant heating of the cells which reduces cell efficiency.
While the cost of manufacturing the solar cells per se currently is the single largest cost factor in the manufacture of a solar cell energy collector installation, any technique which increases the overall efficiency of a solar cell energy collector, or which reduces the cost of manufacturing and/or installing a solar cell energy collection system may have significant commercial importance.
In addition to the photoelectric conversion technique just described, it is well known that solar energy may be converted to other more useful forms of energy through thermal conversion techniques. Typically thermal conversion techniques involve using sunlight to heat up a liquid or gas contained in a thermal converter enclosure and then utilizing the heated liquid or gas in an appropriate manner well known to one skilled in the art to generate power.
Furthermore solar energy may be converted simply to thermal energy and the thermal energy subsequently used for other non-electric production processes (e.g. materials processing) and uses (e.g. water or space heating).
However, as in the case of solar cells, relatively high cost of manufacturing and relatively high installation costs have presented a principal obstacle to wide scale adoption of solar thermal energy collectors. Thus, any technique which reduces the cost of manufacturing and/or installing a solar thermal energy collector system may have significant commercial importance.
One technique the art has developed to increase efficiency of solar cells and thermal converters is to collect and focus solar energy onto the solar cells or thermal converters by means of a “solar concentrator”. Thus a typical solar energy collection system may include reflective or refractive devices which are designed to collect solar energy impinging upon a relatively large area and to focus the collected energy onto a relatively small area of utilization. While the use of solar concentrators result in economic savings by increasing the effective collection area of a solar cell or thermal converter, the prior art solar concentrators themselves are costly to manufacture, and also may add appreciably to the weight of the solar energy collector system. This latter consideration is particularly important in the case of solar cell or solar thermal energy collector systems which are to be used on buildings since the heavier a solar energy collector system is, the more costly the required supporting structure.